UAE drastically cuts funding for Palestinian refugees

The United Arab Emirates drastically reduced its funding to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees in 2020, the year it signed a U.S.-brokered normalization accord with Israel that the Palestinian Authority heavily criticized.

The agency known as UNRWA provides education, health care, and other vital services to some 5.7 million registered Palestinian refugees across the Middle East, mainly descendants of the 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were driven out of Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation.

The UAE donated $51.8 million to UNRWA in 2018 and again in 2019, but in 2020 it gave the agency just $1 million, agency spokesman Sami Mshasha said Friday after Israeli media first reported it.

“We are hoping that in 2021 they will go back to the levels of the previous years,” he said.

Emirati officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Saturday.

Last year the UAE normalized relations with Israel, breaking with a longstanding Arab consensus that recognition should only come in exchange for concessions in the peace process with the Palestinians, which has been moribund for more than a decade.

Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco struck similar agreements shortly thereafter, in what the Trump administration touted as a historic diplomatic achievement. President Joe Biden welcomed the accords and has said he will encourage the resumption of direct peace talks.

The Palestinian Authority, however, viewed the agreements as a betrayal and harshly criticized the UAE. That may have prompted the federation of oil-rich sheikhdoms, which includes Dubai and Abu Dhabi, to slash aid.